­Reading Journal Feb 26 2025

Personal updates: Work continues skittish but other wise fine. The baby blanket is past the halfway point and it’s going on pretty well.

Cut for some personal discussion about deciding to not have kids and family being weird.
I had a really weird interaction with my mom – she’s doing a Lady Doth Protest Too Much act with how she’s fine with not having any grandchildren. She's so fine that she published an article that, in addition to other things, talked about how she expected her retirement to be shaped by taking care of grandchildren, and how she had to go out and find surrogate grandchildren via community volunteering. She then asked me if I'd read this article in a community newsletter that I rarely read - making sure that I had to read it. (I absolutely would never have seen it.)

I started out being neutral about her feelings about the fact that I have decided to not have children - I didn't consult her in that choice b/c truly, I thought her advice would be about her own wishes as projected onto me, and that she'd be emotionally demanding about it. But her insistence on bringing it up over the nearly fifteen years since I got married is grating and a little hurtful. It feels like she’s pushing herself to be fine with the lack of grandchildren when I am the one who made the choice, happily, to not have kids, and so it's fairly tone deaf to try and reassure me of how that decision was fine. I know that it's fine. I made it. My mom is the one who is unsettled and unresolved, and she's making it my problem, and this article she wrote pushed it to a new and more awkward level.

What I’ve Read
System Collapse! Final book in the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. I seem slight doomed to keep re-reading this series, a delightful limbo. Literally every time I finish this series a new book group or friend picks it up.

What I’m Reading 
Conclave – Robert Harris – I picked this up after watching the movie, and I’m more and more impressed with how close the film kept the story line and how many of the book’s details would have not played well on screen. It’s a loving condemnation of the Roman Catholic leadership.

In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan – Stalled out but I’ll get back to it.

Kingdom of Copper – about 40%

Wool (The Omnibus Edition) by Hugh Howey – 9% - Weird and interesting but I haven’t hit any major places where the show diverged except tonally.

Male Order – Unwrapping Masculinity -edited by Rowena Chapman - Communist essays about masculinity in England from like 1990 - fascinating. I really think everyone should read political discussions from past decades, it really gives you scope.

It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror – 52%
Power Broker – Audiobook Part 3 – 1%


What I’ll Read Next
Empire of Gold
Madness of Angels Kate Griffin
City of Lies
The Memory Librarian

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